Thursday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

The new covenant is foretold by the prophet Jeremiah.  We must regularly examine our hearts to see if we are living according to the new covenant, or if we are still stuck in the old.  Make no mistake!  All Christian religiosity and practice is not “new testament” simply because it has the label Christian or is practiced by the Baptised.  The Old Covenant remains a sort of religious default that we fall back on, even as Christians, when we stop living according to the Spirit.  The Old Covenant provides a set of standards, clarity on right and wrong, consequences and punishments reserved for sinners.  If you want to avoid suffering – especially the eternal kind – the Old Covenant tells you what to do and how to behave.  The New Covenant does not cancel any of that truth, but addresses the much more fundamental problem of our existence: we are incapable, on our own, of any real goodness.  The New Covenant addresses the root of our problem, we need to be healed, forgiven, and supported by God’s help.  It is our heart that needs God’s touch because it is wayward and susceptible to all manner of evil suggestion.  If evil gets into our heart, our mind will be unable to straighten things out – even if it perceives the evil as evil.  To pretend or presume that there is no evil in our hearts, or that the evil present there isn’t so bad is precisely the lack of humility and poverty that will keep God’s new covenant of grace from acting.

If we want to become truly the people of the new covenant, we really have to stop worrying about how things appear: in our own lives and in the lives of others.  We must begin to see God’s grace at work in hearts – we must see the suffering due to sin as the beginning of its remedy.  We must also accept that our lives and hearts are more in the hands of God than in our own hands.  We must come to thrive more on God’s mercy and forgiveness in a growing attitude of humility and relationship of love with Him than on the satisfaction we derive from being “basically good.”  “Judge not” does not nullify the Old Covenant: it liberates us to live according to the New.

AUGUSTINE:

Nowhere, or hardly anywhere, except in this passage of the prophet, do we find in the Old Testament Scriptures any mention so made of the New Testament as to indicate it by its name. It is no doubt often referred to and foretold as about to be given, but not so plainly as to have its name mentioned. Consider, then, carefully what difference God has testified as existing between the two Testaments—the old covenant and the new.¹

AUGUSTINE:

Because of the offense of the old Adam, which was by no means healed by the law that commanded and threatened, it is called the old covenant. The other is called the new covenant, because of the newness of the spirit that heals the new Adam of the fault of the old. Then consider what follows, and see in how clear a light the fact is placed, that people who have faith are unwilling to trust in themselves: “Because,” says he, “this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, says the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts.”²

CHRYSOSTOM:

There was holiness before, and there is holiness now. There was a baptism before, and there is a baptism now. There was a sacrifice before, and there is a sacrifice now. There was a temple before, and there is a temple now. There was a circumcision before, and there is a circumcision now. So also there was grace before, and there is a grace now. But the first-named as types, and the others as the reality, have kept the same name but not the same meaning. Thus, even in pictures and images one that is done in black and white shades is said to be a person, and likewise one that has been done in realistic colors. Similarly, in the case of statues, both the gold one and clay one are called statues, but the one as a model, the other as the real statue.³

AUGUSTINE:

Isn’t the finger of God to be understood as being the Holy Spirit? Read the gospel, and see that where one Evangelist has the Lord saying, “If I with the Spirit of God cast out demons,” another says, “If I with the finger of God cast out demons.” So if that law too was written by the finger of God, that is by the Spirit of God, the Spirit by which Pharaoh’s magicians were defeated, so they said, “This is the finger of God.” So if that law too, indeed because that law too was composed by the Spirit of God, that is, by the finger of God, why can it not be said of it, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Jesus Christ has delivered you from the law of sin and death”?… So, the “law of the Spirit of life,” written on the heart, not on stone, in Christ Jesus, in whose person was celebrated the ultimately real and genuine Passover “has delivered you from the law of sin and death.”⁴

CHRYSOSTOM:

Peter was examining the issue by human and earthly reasoning. He thought it disgraceful to Jesus as something unworthy of him. Jesus responded sharply, in effect saying, “My suffering is not an unseemly matter. You are making this judgment with a carnal mind. If you had listened to my teachings in a godly way, tearing yourself away from carnal understanding, you would know that this of all things most becomes me. You seem to suppose that to suffer is unworthy of me. But I say to you that for me not to suffer is of the devil’s mind.” So he repressed Peter’s alarm by contrary arguments.
Remember that John, accounting it unworthy of Christ to be baptized by him, was persuaded by Christ to baptize him, saying, “Let it be so now.” So we find Peter as well, forbidding Christ to wash his feet. He is met by the words, “If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.” Here too Jesus restrained him by the mention of the opposite, and by the severity of the reproof he repressed his fear of suffering.⁵

1. ON THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER 33.  Wenthe, D. O. (Ed.). (2009). Jeremiah, Lamentations (p. 212). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
2. ON THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER 35.  Wenthe, D. O. (Ed.). (2009). Jeremiah, Lamentations (pp. 213–214). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
3. HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 14.  Wenthe, D. O. (Ed.). (2009). Jeremiah, Lamentations (p. 215). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
4. SERMON 155.3, 6.  Wenthe, D. O. (Ed.). (2009). Jeremiah, Lamentations (pp. 215–216). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
5. THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, HOMILY 54.6.  Simonetti, M. (Ed.). (2002). Matthew 14-28 (p. 48). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.